History of Black Maternal Health Lecture, Simulcast & Live Discussion

This event will happen in two parts. The first part will be the broadcast of a previously recorded lecture with Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens. The second part of the event will be a live discussion session with participants about the lecture and Black maternal health.

Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens is the Linda and Charles Wilson Professor in the History of Medicine and Director of the Humanities in Medicine program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, one of two Black women in the nation who holds these positions. Dr. Cooper Owens also serves as Director of the Program in African American History at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the country’s oldest cultural institution. She is an Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lecturer, a past American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Research Fellow and has won several prestigious honors and awards for her scholarly and advocacy work in history and reproductive and birthing justice. Most recently, the University of Virginia’s School of Nursing selected Dr. Cooper Owens as the 2022 Agnes Dillon Randolph Award Winner for her scholarship on the history of Black nurses and healers, their highest honor. A popular public speaker and writer, Dr. Cooper Owens has published articles, essays, book chapters, and op-eds on issues that concern African American historical experiences and reproductive justice. Her first book, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender and the Origins of American Gynecology won a Darlene Clark Hine Book Award from the Organization of American Historians as the best book written in African American women’s and gender history. It has recently been translated into Korean and will be translated into Brazilian Portuguese by Winter 2022. She is currently working on a popular biography of Harriet Tubman’s through the lens of disability and a monograph about the history of race, medical discovery, and the C-section. 

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